10 Unheard Of Details Surrounding America’s Child Labor In The 1900s

6 /10 Work From Home

When standards and legislation started to roll out and diminish the ability for laborers to hire and manage children in factories, many industries turned to Household Enterprises, where homes had converted floorspace dedicated to a specific business.

These ranged from more wholesome parental-controlled environments where children helped during off-hours to factories in residential buildings, where children from other families would be sent to work, as well.

5 /10 Every Bit Counts

Children were predominantly paid, not even 10% of what adults made at the same jobs, even doing labor.

Because they were children, there was no other real reason why.

It was never assumed that children would be sent out as the sole breadwinners or laborers for their families, even though such cases were uncommon enough to warrant attention.

4 /10 Workforce Maturity

Children who worked in hard labor often developed debilitating conditions as they grew older, much to the point that once they became fully-fledged adults, they were too sickly or damaged to continue working at all and thus became burdens to the state or to their children they might have had early on, who they would then end up sending out to work to pay for the family.

The child laborers who got out the best from these centuries were kids who worked on farms, weren’t in toxic environments, and were given better rearing.

3 /10 Modern Era

Child labor is thought of as an old mistake of early industrial capitalism, but it continues today.

In developed countries like the UK and America, it’s much less prominent, mostly relegated to rural farming or poor areas where the labor is not intensive thanks to the decades of intense restrictions that have cleaned up most of the industrial sector.

It’s mostly down to farm labor and neighborhood chores. Kids who seek employment are treated fairly and to a bevy of safe, stable choices to help build responsibility and a good work ethic.

2 /10 Not Modern Enough

In under-developed or developing countries, child labor is still quite rampant in dangerous job sectors.

These places don’t have paperboys or entrepreneurial girl scouts selling cookies. In Africa, children work in manufacturing industries.

The legal age of employment in Brazil starts at 14, and even then, there are millions of reported “child” laborers.

Areas in Southeast Asia and China also exploit child labor in factories which may be cleaner than the coal-powered era but aren’t any easier to work in for 12 hours – or more – a day.

1 /10 An Oliver Twist

Famous author Charles Dickens, the writer of many classic pieces of literature, was a child laborer at just 12 years old, where he worked in a shoe polish factory to help cover his father’s debts.

Though he grew up to become a prolific and famous author, the nightmare of child labor that he attempted to share with the more fantastic world continues today.